Daniel Spisak on Technology

Day 0:

So I wake up at an early hour to finish packing my stuff for the con and head up to Fullerton. Hooked up with Arclight and Danozano and caravaned out to Las Vegas around 10AM. Things are going great and we stop at Baker where it was only 110F to top off the gas tank. Then a few miles in past state line nature decides to show off with an awesome lightning storm which then takes the ambient 110F temp down to 68F in the span of a few miles resulting in a massive monsoon thunderstorm.

We arrive in Vegas around 2PM about an hour before the DEFCON Cannonballer’s. Rest of the day is spent wandering around the Alexis Park talking to old friends and working out sleeping arrangements for the convention since I’m in nomad mode still. Later myself, CHS, Jim, and others head out to the Bellagio for the buffet.

Afterwards we hook up with other goons and go roaming the AP in search of entertainment. Oh there was also a wedding reception this night for two hackers that got married earlier that day.

Day 1:

Friday starts off uneventful…that is until the first talk I go to in the morning. I foolishly forgot just how many people would by going to Fydor’s Nmap hacking talk at the Apollo. So of course I get to the talk just as its starting and its completely full up. So I head over to the tent for the biometrics talk and discover that the entire tent schedule is already an hour behind due to some scheduling snafu.

Later throughout the day was the Xprobe2 active OS fringerprinting talk and then much later in the day was Dan Kaminsky’s very excellent Black Ops of TCP/IP talk. Dan ended up drinking quite a lot near the end of his talk and quite frankly I was surprised he was standing as you can see here.

Of course after his talk was the first nights round of Hacker Jeapordy which ran rather long but good to see back after last years disasterous “Leetest Link” which sucked. This was also the first time at Hacker Jeapordy that I can remember where we had a double barf situation happen between two of the teams. Afterwards was yet more roaming and partying with IVU and the folks down at Pool 3. At some point during the night pool 3 had its water dyed a dark blue. By morning this was a dark violet color and the AP hotel staff decided to drain the entire pool and then fill it back up with water which took much of the next day.

Day 2:

This day was more talks, some good ones on lockpicking techniques, as well as another on Google Adsense word tips and tricks. Once again the tent talk schedule was messed up, but this time they managed to make the schedule be wrong by a different amount of time throughout the day making it a real pain in the butt to get to the right talks in time. Had some free time and finally checked out the CTF area and then the Blacklisted! 411 booths:

Then later in the day was the most excellent Meet the Fed panel hosted by Jim Christy of the DoD Cyber Crime Institue and there were speakers from DoD, NSA, FTC, FBI, RCMP, US Dept of Treasury, US Post Office, and I might be missing one TLA here. The overriding message from all of the Feds is “We want to hire you if you are talented, but only if you dont cross the line by illegally breaking into systems”. It’s always worth listening to these guys talk and see where they stand on a variety of current issues.

Aftrerwards that night was Hacker Jeapordy where I finally had a charged camera available to get some photos of the new Vinly Vanna, Malice who turns out to be a geek and nice.

Of course the talk of HJ this night was the fact that it’s host, Winn Schwartau was owned on the Wall of Shame as he allowed his laptop to be used by an untrusted individual who then turned on Winn’s Airport networking and let his email client check via the Defcon network. Here you can see Winn accepting his sheep prize from the Digital Wolf folks.

Afterwards was partying with folks at IVU, Ninja Hackers, and then the 303. A whole hell of a lot of fun! In fact, perhaps a bit too much fun.

Day 3:

This day was lost to the locusts that consumed Dan at 5AM. I have some rather amazing friends for them to have put up with what happened that night. I do apologize for what happened and no I’m not going to say any more about it then that. After recovering from that whirlwind I got up after 3PM and checked out some of the remaining awards and said bye to folks and then headed back to California. Only took 5 hours to drive in the evening Sunday traffic.